Bombay Berlin Film pumps production

Shingle's selling 'Love' at EFM; has 3 pics in the works

Indo-German outfit Bombay Berlin Film Prods. is ramping up production on a slate of international projects.

The sales and production shingle was launched in 2011 by Berlin writer-producer Katharina Suckale and Mumbai actor-producer Arfi Lamba with the aim of making movies bridging the Indian and European film industries.

Bombay Berlin is at the EFM handling international sales on Anisha Khanna’s romantic drama “Colours of Love,” which was backed by Nuremberg-based financier Michael Opitz.

The shingle has so far produced Vaibhav Abnave’s “Maunraag,” an experimental drama inspired by the works of Indian-Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar, and it’s heading to Italy this year for “First Summer,” a romantic road movie with comic elements by Shivajee Chandrabhushan (“Frozen”).

Lamba stresses, however, that Bombay Berlin’s focus lies beyond Bollywood and more in modern Indian cinema and international co-productions.

Current projects in the works include:

•Chandrabhushan’s “The Untold Tale,” about a French woman’s search for the truth behind her family history. Paris-based MSVP is co-producing the $3.3 million project, which will shoot in France and India.

•The romantic thriller “Between Our Worlds,” set in Berlin and Mumbai and based on Suckale’s screenplay.

•”Asmahan,” a biographical tale of the controversial Syrian Druze singer and actress who, during WWII, helped British and Free French forces invade Syria but who later switched sides to aid the Germans after the Allies reneged on their promise of Syrian independence from France.

The company is also looking to adapt Amitav Ghosh’s novel “The Shadow Lines” into a miniseries. The story chronicles the life of a man through his recollections, including the people and events that dominated his childhood in Calcutta in the 1960s and later in London.